Database of stories of the Buddha’s past lives
The jataka story of the monkey-king as illustrated at the ancient Indian site of Sanchi.
I’m a bit obsessed with jataka stories – tales of the past lives of the Buddha. They are a wonderful way into Buddhist ideas, concerns and characters, not to mention fantastic stories in their own right.
I made some teaching resources based around jataka stories for an earlier project – “Approaching Religion Through Story” – and you can download those resources from an earlier post.
For the full range, though, you might enjoy exploring my jataka database: https://jatakastories.div.ed.ac.uk/
Although this was created primarily for scholarship and research, we always hoped it would be of interest to a general audience too. You can search the stories by theme (for example, all the stories about “craving” or all the stories about “friendship”) and for most there are open-access translations as well as additional information about texts, characters and places. There is even a growing bank of images that can be used to illustrate lessons and activities.
Naomi Appleton
(Photograph courtesy of James Hegarty)
